Insights

Where Do Advertising Agency Clients Search? Could Be Agency Spotter

Peter · April 25, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Where do advertising agency clients go to search for new agencies?

To answer this critical question, you have to think like a client. However, putting yourself in the shoes of a client looking for that new shiny advertising, digital, etc. agency is not easy. Some client prospects are sophisticated buyers, more are not. Some have selected agencies before. Most have not.

I’ve written at length about how prospective clients find advertising, digital and PR agencies. You can read a bit here… “Ten Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency”.

But let’s keep it simple. There are essentially two primary methods of being found that you can manage…

You work to let prospective clients know that your agency exists (direct account-based marketing; advertising; press; awards shows, ah, yes, actively managing referrals, etc.)
You are visible where and when the client is looking (Google position; inbound-directed content marketing; agency and agency key employee LinkedIn profiles; agency directories; ad club lists, etc..)

Sure, there is a bit of a Homer Simpson ‘doi’ factor here. But, believe me, many agencies do not take advantage of every awareness opportunity that avails. A side story. When I moved back from Saatchi London to run North American business development I asked a competitive NYC agency principle, his name was on the door, what worked. He said’ “I have no clue what is the most effective business development strategy, so we do everything.”

More history. Fifteen years ago, I found out that my Portland agency’s previous owner had placed ads for us in the Yellow Pages (!) by the agency getting a Yellow Pages driven-lead from the USA’s largest saltwater boat company – we won the account. Who could have predicted that the boat company’s CEO used the Yellow Pages to search for an agency? Learning = be everywhere that makes sense. OK, I’d pass on today’s Yellow Pages (I think).

Agency Spotter

The agency search website Agency Spotter is a very active agency awareness resource.

Agency Spotter was launched in 2013 to help marketers find the right marketing communications agency. Believe me, in my role as an ad agency client, 1995 to 2002, finding the right agency and making this critical engagement decision was not easy. I had run business development at the world’s largest agency but even with that personal experience, it was a tough process for me to find and select the right agency.

Here’s Agency Spotter’s mantra.

Agency Spotter is reinventing how brands find and work with creative agencies, design firms and marketing service providers.

For every business, finding marketing agencies takes significant time and is full of risk. Agency Spotter’s aim is to help change that. Our digital platform makes it much faster and free to find great agencies and design firms that fit the needs of brands and provides more information to help them make confident decisions.

Whether you are a subject matter expert looking for a small niche agency to inject some innovation in a specific area of your business or you’re a marketing leader searching for a digital agency of record, Agency Spotter makes it easy for agencies and brands to find one another and work smarter together.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Agency Spotter’s founder and leader Brian Regienczuk about the service and its 2019 Marketing Trends Report. A survey of marketers.

The 2019 Marketing Trends Report

You can download the 2019 Marketing Trends Report here. There is some very good news.

57% of CEO’s and 63% of CMO’s expect to increase their 2019 marketing budgets.
Marketers still dig advertising. “Advertising” is Agency Spotter’s most searched service.
Today’s pool of decision makers is much more diverse. I find it interesting that 42.2% are 25 to 34 in age. Clearly, a high concentration of digital natives.
If you are a woman-owned agency, you are in good shape. There were 74% more searches for ‘woman-owned’ agencies year over year.

OK, got to go here. There is some bad news for your advertising, digital and PR agency on Agency Spotter. You are in a highly competitive environment.

A search of the agencies listed on Agency Spotter turned up 2,302 advertising; 660 PR; 1,124 digital strategy and 696 social media agencies. And, there are even more sub-categories. This is bad news if your agency is not listed (a basic listing is free). As you might expect, if you pay more and you get more awareness goodies. [Read more…] about Where Do Advertising Agency Clients Search? Could Be Agency Spotter

Advertising Agency Searches and New Business Pitches: An Interview With Darren Wooley

Peter · April 15, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Australia’s Darren Woolley On The Art And Science Of Advertising Agency Searches and New Business Pitches.

With thousands of advertising, design, digital and PR agencies to choose from, prospective clients need a little help in making their selection. One way is for agencies to ‘advertise’. That means getting your agency awareness up. I discuss a how-to here: 10 Ways To Advertisinse Your Agency.

Another smart way to gain attention is to be on the radar of agency search consultants. Not all, just the right ones.

Whether or not your agency will ever be included in a search run by an agency search consultant, experienced search experts can help us all better understand elements of the search process and how clients select agencies.

To get an expert opinion on how search consultants work, I turned to international search consultant Darren Woolley of Australia’s leading search firm TrinityP3. This interview is one of 14 expert interviews from my book “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.”

Darren Woolley, Founder and Managing Director, TrinityP3

TrinityP3 is an independent strategic marketing management consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia. It works across continents and has 40 of Australia’s top 100 advertisers using its services. The company assists marketers, advertisers, and procurement with agency search & selection, agency engagement & alignment, and agency monitoring & benchmarking to ensure maximum performance in efficiency and effectiveness of their advertising and marketing budgets.

Darren started as a scientist, got into advertising as a copywriter, and ended up a creative director. After 15 years in advertising, he realized when marketers and their agencies work well together, amazing things happen. He established TrinityP3 in 2000 as an independent marketing management consulting company that provides marketers and advertisers with benchmarks, training, and advice on how to maximize the value of their marketing budgets.

PL: What are the primary benefits that you offer your clients? [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Searches and New Business Pitches: An Interview With Darren Wooley

Video And An Advertising Agency Sales Pitch

Peter · April 14, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I’m in L.A. doing some work with agencies and a local micro-photo-series for my global The People project. While waiting to get started shooting on Venice Beach, I hit up the Social Media Marketing podcast – one of my long-term get-smarter podcasts. I landed on a really good one. I highly recommend that you listen to “How to Create Video Ad Funnels That Work.”

I guarantee that the learning here could be applied to both your clients and your agency’s own sales program. Video rules – if done correctly. Here’s the podcast pitch from the host Michael Stelzner:

Thinking about creating more video ads? Wondering how to produce more effective social media video ads?

To explore how to create video ad funnels that work, I interview video ads expert Travis Chambers. His company, Chamber Media, specializes in creating scalable social video ads for clients such as Turkish Airlines, NordicTrack, and Yahoo.

I urge you to check it out. Especially if you want to learn from an ‘advertising agency’ that has separated itself from the mega-pack of zillions other advertising agencies.

But wait, there’s more…

The Chamber Media Website

The more is that I want to quickly highlight Chamber Media’s website.

They do a few things very right.

They have an unambiguous agency positioning that meets a clear market need.
I dig their concise opening sales pitch and so would potential clients: DRIVE MILLIONS IN PROFITABLE SALES WITH SCALABLE SOCIAL VIDEO ADS. They deliver the right words: millions, profitable sales, scalable and video ads.
They immediately go for the ask. The home page Work With Us button and the We’re Excited To Chat (as in friendly) contact page is aimed at driving leads. Chamber might ask a bit too many questions, but these are not required and helps the agency weed out low-spend low-value clients.
The Home Page goes right to strong cases and (!!!) results + ROI. ROI is in… pretty pictures, kinda, out.
They say what they do, list their clients, testimonials and show some very good press. How could you not say, “Yup, these guys are for real?”

It’s About Sales Baby

Way too many advertising agency websites do not sell. If you need some sales inspiration, head over to Chamber Media.

Me

A personal note: I am just getting started on my The People photo project. My goal is to shoot more portraits of more people on more continents than any other photographer. I will discuss this in detail in a future post. So far, I have over 300 portraits all shot with the same look = outside against a portable white background. I’ve now shot in China, Mexico, Selma, and L.A. Here are two from this week’s Venice Beach series. I think I’ll head back to Mexico with over 60 new portraits.

10 Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency

Peter · March 27, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Do you advertise your advertising agency?

Based on my industry experience, most do not. This means that agencies are not aiming and tailoring their primary sales messages to their target audiences.

This post offers 10 ways to advertise your advertising agency as well as the why you should to it, like, yesterday.

Caveat: You should seriously consider advertising your advertising agency. However, you should first run a smart, consistent account-based marketing program to directly drive agency awareness to your best prospects.

Advertising – A Definition

Just for the heck of it, and to get us all on the same page, here is a definition of advertising. I use ‘advertising’ as a universal term for marketing communications companies.

Advertising is a means of communication with the users (or, non-users) of a product or service. Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them, as defined by the Advertising Association of the UK.

Why An Advertising Agency Should Advertise

There are four reasons an agency should advertise.

You want to be where prospective clients look for agencies.
You want to put your agency right in front of the right prospects (and even busy agency search consultants like Laura Bajkowski) 24/7.
You want to borrow the interest that on and offline publications can deliver.
You want to prove that you believe in advertising and that you are super creative.

10 Advertising Platforms Your Agency Should Consider

WARNING: Most likely, your agency cannot create and run efforts on all of these platforms. Roll them out based on your marketing plan.

TEST: Test everything. Do more of what works and less of what does not. Yeah, I’m being very obvious. But, testing is the mantra. Your clients want ROI. You do too and running your own programs may make you a better judge of how to judge success across advertising channels.

In addition to listing the ad platforms, I am also giving some, not all, of the reasons that a local/regional agency and an expert agency (example, lead gen B2B agency) should choose the platform. This is meant as food for thought. There are too many types of agencies for me to give every iteration. But, you get it.

Update: It is five hours after I wrote this. I now have number 11. It’s at the bottom of the list.

1. Google AdWords.

Every client in need of a new agency searches on Google. If you are not on page one for the search, buy the position.

Do keyword research and buy the keywords that meet your reach objectives.

Local/regional agency. It would be insane to not try to be on Google’s page one for your location. Example: if you are based in Seattle, buy ‘Seattle advertising agency’ or ‘Seattle SEO agency.’

Expert. Buy ‘Lead generation agency’ or ‘high tech leads agency.’ Do you want Purina as a client? Think about what their marketing team searches on.

2. YouTube.

I have an agency client that produces an interview with marketing leaders every month. They blast them out in emails, on their blog and… yup, leverage the power of the number two search engine to aim their videos at their audience. The agency also retargets. Since there are fewer results on YouTube than on Google, the agency gets more attention (and, yup, these videos also turn high up in Google searches.)

It would real easy for a local agency, most are, to ‘own’ their town’s video world. How about a weekly where to eat in Kansas City series shot on an iPhone?

Need inspiration? Here is john st.’s rather viral video (as of writing it has 2,447,266 views) about the power of Catvertising. Frankly, has any other agency ever had over 2 million views?

3. Advertising Agency Directories.

This is a serious no-brainer that many agencies do not take advantage of. In many cases, an agency directory is on Google’s page one and lists your competitors.

Make sure you are every relevant agency directory and spend the cash if it nets you a higher position or allows you to deliver more information (i.e. your work) and, especially, a link back to your website. [Read more…] about 10 Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency

Advertising Awards

Peter · March 8, 2019 · Leave a Comment

A Judge On How Not To Win An Advertising Award

I Am Stealing From A Genius To Help Your Agency Win An Advertising Award

Warning: I will be testy here. Despite the fact that advertising agencies love winning the big advertising award – they shoot themselves in the foot when writing the entry.

Too often agencies are really bad at how they write up their award entry. Given the number of the “We want to win” bucks agencies spend on creative and ROI awards — to fail at the application stage is insanity.

RFPs Too

Side note, after writing mucho RFP responses for my agency; talking with dozens of clients – who are often baffled by poorly written RFP responses; and reviewing RFP proposals assembled by my agency clients, I have to tell you that the same affliction is running rampant when agencies respond to RFPs. Reponses are often poorly written; rushed out the door; do not follow instuctions and on. But, that’s another blog post.

Back To Awards

You want that ad award…. here’s why… the wonderful, shiny, famous advertising award begets a range of benefits:

Fame. The fame equation is simple: advertising awards equal global and local industry awareness. Let’s go big. If you win a Cannes Lion or an ADDY more clients will hear about you. You can talk about your win on your agency website. But, even more people will hear about it in Ad Age, your local business journal and the award website itself.
Awards deliver third-party confirmation of your prowess. Awards deliver new client interest. Awards are proof that you are great at what you do. This is especially true when you consider the amorphous concept of ‘creativity’ and how wonderful it is when someone else calls you ‘creative’.
You get something new and shiny to talk about. If it is a big award, you can put it on your home page. And, even in your outbound marketing.
Your clients will receive confirmation that they made the right decision when they hired you. Some might even congratulate you.
Your agency staff feels really good.
You’ll use the award to entice talent to join up.
You will have a statue of some sort to put in your award-strewn agency reception area.

All good, right? However, over the years I have seen many hungry agencies fail at the actual art of writing award entries.

Yes, there is an art. When I worked at New York’s Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (the largest agency in New York) we prided ourselves on our ability to write great award entries. For a few years running, we won more EFFIES than any other agency because we understood how to meet the needs of EFFIES judges and had a smart, effective template. In fact, if you go to the EFFIES website, you can read award-winning case studies. But, right now I’d like you to stay with me.

Writing a smart, well-written advertising award entry seems like a no-brainer. But, for too many agencies, it is a no-brain act.

But… Don’t Take My Word For It (OK, Now The Genius Part) An Advertising Award Judge’s Perspective

[Read more…] about Advertising Awards